Preamble: the general opinion about computer privacy seems to be something along the lines of "I've got nothing to hide, I'm not that important, etc. etc. etc.". Indeed perhaps none of us are particularly important individually, but having a ton of data about a whole population is important, and that is why they harvest it, that is why there is mass surveillance in the first place. And all that data is used for selling stuff to people (personalised ads, lots of money to be made there), to influence peoples opinions (personalised feeds), to spread propaganda (none of us are immune to this), and other things. I'm pretty sure any normal person would care about this, and that is why I'm writing this article, for people who are perhaps curious about the whole privacy thing but don't know that much about it (normies). I'm trying to cover like 80% of the topic with 20% of the effort, because I am lazy and I want to try to keep it relatively short.
This article is oriented towards a person who has limited knowledge on computer privacy. If you're someone who's experienced on this topic and you plan on reading, please share your opinion on why this is perhaps a bad or incomplete article. It's not meant to be complete, but the closer it is, the better.
Computer privacy is, unfortunately, a complicated topic today. That is in major part due to mega corporations, big tech, who either pretend there is no problem here and whoever claims there are privacy issues is a tin foil hat wearer, or they claim they care about privacy by implementing some feature which gives the user the feeling they have control over which data they share.
One of the ways they trick the users is by constantly reminding them that their data -- messages, photos, etc. etc. etc., is encrypted. I regularly hear from people how WhatsApp is a good messaging app because everything is encrypted, so there's no need to use something like Signal. This completely misses the point about which data is being collected.
To expand on the previous point: when messages are encrypted eavesdropping is prevented (let's disregard the possibility of a flawed encryption algorithm). That, however, does not curb survellance one bit.
Surveillance is gathering all of the other information around the actual messages: when they are sent, from where/whom they are sent, to where/whom they are sent, how frequently, how long the messages are (or rather dense, because they can contain images and other media besides text), etc. etc. etc.
Here's how I like to explain to people why encryption (i.e. preventing eavesdropping) is useless when the surveillance is advanced enough.
Say you ask your friend what they're doing today, and they say they're going shopping or something along those lines. You say alright have fun whatever. Now, you either personally or by extension by having someone work with you follow your friend's movements. You figure out that even though they said they were going shopping, they went to meet someone in front of the shopping mall or store whatever. They exchanged packages, talked for awhile, and parted ways. You don't know the content of the packages (that would be eavesdropping). Following your friend and the other individual you see that your friend went home, while the individual went to meet up with several more people. Following those people as well, you see them going to parties in the evening. Following the individual who exchanges packages with many different people you find him eventually meeting up with this one other individual where they exchange two incredibly large packages, or rather they are significantly larger than those the individual exchanged with other people. Going back to those people who went partying, you see some of them leaving the parties in states of impaired ability to walk, speak, etc. etc. etc. Tying all of these together you suspect (but have no proof yet) that the person exchanging the packages is some sort of drug dealer. Additional surveillance will reveal further details about this whole matter.
The above paragraph -- in a simplified (perhaps oversimplified) manner -- showcases how pure surveillance, no eavesdropping, can lead you to some interesting conclusions. It also doesn't involve any computer devices such as telephones.
Today, instead of having a limit on how to surveil and how many individuals to surveil, companies and governments surveil nearly everyone almost all of the time simply through the device they carry always at their side: the telephone (which is in fact an extremely portable pocket computer with incredibly advanced capabilities).
Since nearly everyone in the world uses computers, usually in the form of a smartphone, it's become trivial to implement mass surveillance. "Social" media is ubiquitous, to the point that not using any social media service is considered unusual, if not outright weird.
To use social media you have to sign up and give some data about yourself, and you know what data you are giving there. Now when you start to use it, you don't know about some data you are giving. Sure you know that you posted something, like a story or a reel or a tweet or a video etc. etc. etc., but you don't know that the social media app also tracks what you look at, for how long, how often, etc. etc. etc. Slowly, it gathers data on what interests you, and then keeps recommending stuff according to the data it collected (the algorithm as it's frequently called). This keeps you glued to the screen for longer, and you look at more ads, and the chance of you wanting to buy something or some service increases. Therefore, your data is worth money because it can be used to make money, pretty simple. Besides making money, it is also used to influence your opinions in general, usually according to some powerful individuals or companies. Therefore it shows you some content more frequently, and some content less frequently if at all, to sway your opinion surreptitiously.
Social media is perhaps the number one devil here, but certainly not the only one. Even if you don't use social media, you use services which still feed you something. Not sure if YouTube can be considered social media (it once was, it's called Youtube because it was supposed to be about regular people, you, posting and sharing videos about your interests, but now it's not about you anymore, it's about content creation), but lets call it something like "television lite". You spend your time on it watching videos and perhaps commenting, not posting your own videos (I'm pretty sure it's like 90% of people just watching, 9% watching and commenting, and 1% making videos, that was the statistic I saw somewhere which applies to social media in general, even forums). You do subscribe to something but you still get recommended videos and continue watching those. To not repeat myself too much, the same thing happens on YouTube as does on Instagram or Twitter or whatever. Again, ads are shown to you so they make money, and they recommend videos based on your interests to keep you glued to make more money, and to sway your opinions this or that way, by pushing some things and censoring others.
That was about media consumption, but web browsing suffers from the same stuff; again, ads being shown all the time, pages recommended according to data gathered on you, etc. etc. etc. Google here is the biggest evil. The only proof you need is the fact that cca. 90% of their profits come from advertisments, i.e. data collected on users.
So it's ads ads and more ads, and propaganda and propaganda and more, etc. etc. etc. Never ending.
There is much, much more to say about surveillance using computers, but I don't feel like expanding these margins further.
The main issue, or rather challenge, here is that we humans are creatures of habit and don't feel like changing how we do things. This results in, among other things, always using the default options presented to us. When it comes to computers the default options are, unfortunately, almost always bad for the user and good for the one offering the service. To change these habits which lead us to choices which are bad for our privacy, it's best to take it one step at a time, and give it our best shot.
First we should simply try to ask ourselves: "Do I really need to give them this data they ask of me?" Surprisingly, most of the time the answer will be no.
This is the small print where you have to opt out of data collection, which is typically described as "helping improve the service for everyone". Opting out can be annoying either because the opt out option is tucked away somewhere or because it's not very visible. The most annoying thing is when the button they want you to click is bright and full of colour, and the button for opting out isn't even a button but just grey text on a grey background or something along those lines. Personally that pisses me off as I have trouble with low contrast text.
The quick advice here is to click the poorly visible button, in 99% of cases it's the right choice.
Think about whether you even need to use a service before signing up for it, or if you're using it think about what are you getting from it. E.g. I used to have instagram cause people wanted to send me some reels. I made an instagram account, and I'm not ashamed to say it was eating up my time. It took me some time to realise that it was hypnotising me and not giving me anything useful. Then, when I was about to delete it, I had some second thoughts. After deciding to delete it, boy oh boy how difficult was it to find the way to properly delete the account and not just deactivate it. After finally managing to delete my account, day by day I realised I hadn't really lost anything of value. Some people have use for instagram though, don't get me wrong. An acquaintance of mine is a professional videographer, and if he doesn't have instagram it's as if he doesn't exist in the market at all.
There are certainly other things to say about how to use computers more carefully, but this is pretty good in my opinion.
There is a de facto duopoly when it comes to telephones, you either pick an android device or an ios device. Both are bad, but in my opinion android is worse. The simple reason is that google is a company whose profits come primarily from user data, while apple is a company whose profits come primarily from selling devices and services (although it seems apple is investing more and more into collecting user data as well). There is an option to use GrapheneOS on google Pixel devices, which is relatively advanced, but a good option if you want to take an extra step in the direction of reducing data collection as much as possible. There is an option not to use a smartphone, but people generally need access to maps for navigation, web for information, and messaging programs for communication other than phone calls and sms. Just keep in mind that whatever device you use, if you decide to use e.g. instagram or other privacy invading service, it doesn't matter all that much.
Personal computers such as desktops and laptops are, for the time being, much more customisable compared to smartphones. This offers us more choice and greater freedom in choosing tools which would help us protect our personal data.
Probably the most used computer program, as it offers access to all of the popular services the majority of us uses.
Now, during the whole article I've been pretty calm in my writing, but this deserves urgency
DO NOT USE GOOGLE CHROME
Just don't do it. It is first and foremost a data harvester, and then it's a web browser. Practically anything else is a better choice (or at least less bad).
If you are using chrome, I recommend you install Brave, it is a free and open source browser with many privacy features built in, it behaves in basically the same way as chrome because they are built using the same foundation (blink engine). Just import your bookmarks, passwords, history, etc. etc. etc., and continue browsing but in a more privacy friendly browser.
There are other popular options for browsers out there, but I'm not sure I would recommend them over brave, with a few exceptions. But lets just say first that you need some kind of ad blocker, or rather wide spectrum blocker, and the premier one which you should use is uBlock Origin. The thing though is, since most web browsers are based on the same foundation as Chrome, and Chrome doesn't support it anymore, neither do they. There is a variant called uBlock Origin lite which is not bad, but not as good. Still, it's a good idea to install that if you just want to use your browser and not switch.
There is a browser called Firefox, which is pretty good, but there are quite a few problems hiding beneath the surface. For one, even though they claim to be the browser for the people, practically 90% of their profits come from Google, who pay them to use Google as the default search engine. Besides that, quite a few telemetry options are enabled by default (the same can't be said about brave). But, you can install uBlock origin on firefox, and that is a big pro.
Besides ublock origin perhapes the most important browser extension would be DecentralEyes.
Why does the operating system heading come after browser, you might ask? Because the operating system's only function is to start up the web browser.
This is a joke, obviously. It comes after web browser because the order of things here is based around how simple would it be for a user to make a change on how they use their electronics.
Anyway, there is actually not a ton to discuss here. The two most popular options, Windows and Macintosh, are closed source operating systems which omnom that data like crazy. Macintosh is less bad, but if you want to make a choice between these to options I guess you should go with the Macintosh. The obvious choice, however, is some Linux operating system. Any of them are a million times better at not collecting your data than Windows or Macintosh.
But we have a main issue about operating systems. Do you NEED to use some program? Can it run (well) on Linux? Good. If not, then what? You have to decide.
I personally have to use some programs which are windows only, I use them to make money, such is life. But I also have the luxury of owning two computers (they are both cca. ten years old, though). Weigh your requirements, then choose, people have different use cases.
Too many misconceptions around this one. Especially since it stands for virtual PRIVATE network. The private in its name doesn't mean privacy in the sense that it was invented to protect user privacy.
A private network is e.g. a company network, where the computers of that company in the company building are separated from public networks, e.g. the internet. So what would be a virtual private network? Well, you want to work from home, so you connect to your companies virtual private network, and it's as if you're there. Virtually, you are connected to that private network. (Perhaps a bit oversimplified, but I believe it's a good explanation.)
So how are VPNs actuall used for privacy these days? Well, I connect to a e.g. Mullvad VPN server. When I access the internet, I tell the Mullvad Server I want this website, it then asks for the website, then they give it to Mullvad, then Mullvad gives it to me. So the website cannot see the actual IP address of the computer trying to access it.
It not seeing the actual IP address DOES NOT MEAN it can't know who is accessing. If you log into instagram with or without using a vpn you are logging into instagram, it makes no difference in practice.
So using a VPN is only a first step towards improving your privacy. It's not insignificant, but it's not the end all solution as it's typically promoted on youtube (this video is sponsored by X vpn).
I personally would recommend Mullvad VPN, it's affordable, it has a good track record, it's transparent, it was founded before the Snowden leaks so it wasn't started to capitalise on that. I haven't used Njalla so I can't recommend it, but looking into it it seems interesting. It was founded by the pirate bay's cofounder Peter Sunde, that says something.
When something is free it usually means you pay for it in some way which isn't money. This is why you have to be careful about picking your email provider. An obviously bad choice is gmail. Frequently presented as a good option is ProtonMail, which is better. I would recommend posteo, which is paid, but is essentially completely private, not requiring any data to register, no name, phone number, nothing. You can even pay for posteo by cash in the mail (same for Mullvad VPN mentioned above).
In case the reader is curious about what I use, for a telephone I use an iPhone 12, not because i think it's good but because I got it for free. I deleted all of the google stuff from it, including google maps and youtube (I don't have a google account either by the way). On it for web browsing I use brave, it runs quite well. A plus for Brave is that you can easily turn off JavaScript in the settings. For personal use I have an old ass laptop, some Lenovo I don't know which model, it has an old intel i3 processor and 4gb of ram, and also an HDD and not an SSD, so it's damn slow. On it I use Windows 7 professional, and redfox browser with ublock origin, decentraleyes, and mullvad vpn extensions installed. Why am I using an outdated windows instead of linux? For fun. I installed simplewall and blocked basically all connections, MS telemetry, MS updates (what updates?), MS programs. The Mullvad VPN program can't be installed on Windows 7, only 10 and up, so I use the WireGuard program which still supports 7, and then I put in a wireguard profile into it, from Mullvad VPN. The Mullvad browser extension is useful for using socks proxies occasionally. Also WinRAR, Winamp, Total Commander, SumatraPDF, Soulseek, VLC, qBittorrent. This is my amusement computer, the other one I use naturally follows the principles I outlined above.
I don't have a google account, and I don't use any social media. I only have an email, and a neocities account :). Oh, and a stupid icloud account because I currently own an iphone, unfortunately. My pockets are full of air.
This is just scratching the surface. However, I felt like writing this because it's something I wish I found online instead of either too complicated or too simple guides. I think this is somewhere in the middle. If you read this and you have a neocitites account please share your opinion; if you read this and don't have a neocities account I will soon post my email address somewhere here so you can share your thoughts. There are many resources online relating to privacy, but I would first like to recommend a neocities website with excellent articles about privacy, computer related topics, and much more: digdeeper.neocities.org
Go and takeback your privacy!
A cool quote:
"Metadata absolutely tells you everything about somebody’s life. If you have enough metadata you don’t really need content."
Former NSA general counsel Steward Baker
Mullvad's pdf about surveillance: Total Surveillance
Posted on 2025-08-16